Intern experience at Colonial Insurance Agency of Hillsborough - Administrative Support/Customer Service Representative Colonial Insurance Agency Employee Review

The office is full of kind hearted people.

My first 2 months with the company was a good change a pace from my last role where it was basically a call center. I was excited for the flexibility as a 1099 contractor making your own hours and year over year growth working in the insurance industry provides. Stories were told to me of the freedom insurance allows. All great... Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances one of two partners passed away 3 months into my employment. He by far was the best part of this company. He was directly responsible for training me and was available to help pretty much around the clock. Since March the company has had its struggles (understandably) but the sole owner of the company makes the situation much harder since he had no one to train me and takes no accountability. Hes the only one with access to docusign for example. Meaning unless he gets himself together in a timely manner for you a client will have to wait for hours if not days (in my case) to be able to sign something. The issues piled on, I asked on various occasions for some sort of lead source I was directed to a public database to hunt down some basic information and walk in on business owners with no more info than the name of the company on a sheet of paper. No contact info, no competition information, nothing warm about it. Instead of helping me learn the database by training or possibly implementing a different lead generation solution for the company he decided the best course of answer (for his pockets) was to pull the very meager 30,000 base. Which is really just to bridge you for the first 2 years since this is really a strictly commission based role and that salary will be pulled from you. This is just a warning for anyone trying to learn about the commercial insurance industry. Look somewhere else that offers structured training. They don't have the time or resources to teach and if you ask for help or get frustrated about the lack of attention and timing that ruins deals. He'll turn on you. Aside from that the front office of the company is something special. Nothing but wonderful loving people up there. But they can't help with the sales side unfortunately. A typical day of work includes driving 100 + miles in your personal vehicle to companies that you have no real information on other than address. They ask you to open with nothing but workers comp but don't tell you that not all wc is created equal (took 5 months to teach me that) multiple useless surveys done because of lack of direction. And for the first 2 months they had me going to the coast when the coast can't be approved for anything including workers comp (current market restriction). I hope that they figure themselves out sooner rather than later cause the team deserves better but I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon and with no salary in 2024 it just isn't viable. Commission is 50% on new and 25% on renewals but you won't know what each company pays for each line of business cause "that's not how they do it". They also don't allow you to access information on files even if you're doing renewals from them. I was asked by a client if something was a part of their policy and couldn't answer yes or no definitively because I wasn't allowed or provided the actual renewal just a sheet with last years vs this years coverages and rates. I do believe the company was properly managed before the new take over since they are well over 40 years into but current management doesn't know what it's doing.